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Jan. 2—Good morning and welcome to another Friday edition of the Dayton Daily News Sports update!
On the first day of 2025, the 2024 Ohio State football team truly looked like it was expected to all season.
After crushing No. 1 Oregon 41-21, the No. 8 seed Buckeyes have a date with No. 5 Texas in Dallas next week.
How did they earn that opportunity?
Let’s take one more look back at the Rose Bowl and peak ahead to the Cotton.
This one had everything
Ohio State thrived on throwing the ball up to its bigger, faster, stronger players, but the Buckeyes did not simply rely on raw talent alone — as they can in seven or eight games a year — to beat Oregon on Jan. 1 (or Tennessee in the first round).
In the first two playoff games, Ryan Day and his coaching staff have maximized their talent by creating opportunities for Jeremiah Smith, Emeka Egbuka, et al to get open and let quarterback Will Howard get them the ball in space.
Day talked about the Buckeyes creating their own momentum in Pasadena, and they did just that.
The offensive line is still not going to be mistaken for a vintage Urban Meyer (let alone Woody Hayes) Ohio State outfit, but the coaches managed to put them in more advantageous positions, too, with more diverse blocking schemes and by forcing teams to respect the threat of the pass.
That is why you hire someone like Chip Kelly to be offensive coordinator. Sure, he’s known as an offensive guru, but he is also someone who knows how to do more with less — including when he was the head coach at Oregon from 2009-12.
Defensive coordinator Jim Knowles also deserves lots of credit
He was hired three years ago to fix a defense that was helpless more often than not, and he has done that. Still, his units hadn’t gotten it done in big games, and the loss to Oregon earlier in the year brought criticism for being a little…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/newsletter-looking-back-rose-bowl-045900834.html
Author : Dayton Daily News, Ohio
Publish date : 2025-01-03 04:59:00
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